Explanation:
Marked by an unusually bright central region, swirling dust lanes,
and far flung tidal tails, peculiar NGC 3256 is the aftermath of a
truly
cosmic collision.
The 500 million year old clash of two separate galaxies spans
some 100 thousand light-years in
this
sharp Hubble view.
Of course when two galaxies collide, individual stars rarely do.
Giant galactic clouds of
molecular gas
and dust do interact though, and produce spectacular bursts of
star formation.
In this
galaxy clash,
the two original spiral galaxies had similar masses.
Their disks are no longer distinct and the two galactic nuclei
are hidden by obscuring dust.
On the timescale of a few hundred million years the nuclei
will likely also merge
as
NGC 3256 becomes a single large elliptical galaxy.
NGC 3256 itself is nearly 100 million light-years distant toward
the southern sailing constellation Vela.
The frame includes many even more distant background galaxies and
spiky foreground stars.